Embodiments of the present invention relate to methods, systems, and computer-readable media for editing an object displayed by a computer system. Editing comprises detecting an edit operation for an object displayed on a video display of a computer system. An edit operation request is then sent to an abstraction layer via an application program interface provided by the abstraction layer to initiate editing of the object by the abstraction layer. The abstraction layer is a text object model that has two models, a data model for accessing persistent content of text, and a view model for accessing presentation and interaction appearance of text. The text object model has several abstract classes and receives the edit operation request, determines the type of container in which the object is displayed based on properties related to the object to be edited, determines the operations required, incorporating all traditional text manipulation operations including actual editing, layout manipulations and text formatting. The abstraction layers read set of properties related to the object and the container in which the object is displayed in accordance with user instructional interactions.